Talk:Member states of the United Nations

Listing each resolution for Taiwan

 * Background
 * I commented out the entire list (this edit)
 * added it back as a note (this edit)
 * I reverted them, pointing out how it looked (this edit)


 * Appearance
 * To see how it looks included in the references section: ref #23
 * To see how it looks included in the notes section: note #30

I don't think these should be included, in either location. --DannyS712 (talk) 07:18, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I have no objection to removing them entirely but I don't see the value of including a huge paragraph of invisible text. ―Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 07:24, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Then I don't mind if you want to delete the text, but I left it there so that, if down the road someone else decides they wanted to include them, or just see them, it would be there. We could move it to the talk page? --DannyS712 (talk) 07:45, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Sounds good to me--thanks. ―Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 07:46, 19 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Where does the Brookings source support the claim that they made a submission every year? I can't find anything saying that.  Also, other details in the paragraph are not supported by the new source, but are by the original resolutions (ie parallel transitional vs independence, the name used).
 * Even if this was in the new source, I think there is value citing the resolutions themselves when the article is specifically discussing them. Certainly supllementing them with secondary sources is worthwhile though.  TDL (talk) 19:03, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes, but I don't think we need to cite each WP:PRIMARY source from every single year. Also, take a look at the current notes section with these included. It dwarfs everything else, and looks out of place --DannyS712 (talk) 19:10, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I've dropped the titles from the refs, hopefully that addresses your concern? TDL (talk) 00:57, 22 January 2019 (UTC)
 * not really, it takes up an entire column. --DannyS712 (talk) 01:37, 22 January 2019 (UTC)
 * References are there to verify data, not look pretty. I really don't see a problem with a column of references.  TDL (talk) 01:50, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

Individual resolutions:
Resolutions without titles

Country names....official vs. informal/common usage
Why is Bolivia listed as "Plurinational State of Bolivia" and not just "Bolivia"? And why "Republic of Moldova" and not "Moldova"? There are many, many others.

I ask this especially because other countries are listed with their informal names and *not* their official names, such as Afghanistan (and not Islamic Republic of Afghanistan), Albania (vs. Republic of Albania), Algeria (vs. People's Democratic Republic of Algeria), Andorra (vs. Principality of Andorra), etc. You get the picture.

I've been looking at several Wikipedia pages in the last several days, and it's amazing the lack of standardization, sometimes with "good reason" and explanation, and other times without either.

I would suggest that any Wikipedia page that has lists of countries (capitals, current leaders, UN join date, etc.) should standardize on the names. Either the names that people actually use, or the official names, but not both in the same list and the same across different pages. Zonker.in.geneva (talk) 08:28, 10 May 2019 (UTC)


 * Because these are the names used by the UN. CMD (talk) 22:28, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
 * But...do they *really*? See this image from the UN General Assembly. There are other examples for Gambia and Bahamas and others. The two Congos and two Koreas obviously must be differentiated, but for Bolivia and Venezuela, they use the common names. And while I'm on the subject, the UN link you provided lists Bolivia as "Bolivia (Plurinational State of). So, why is it written on this page as "Plurinational State of Bolivia"? It's not the way the UN listed it. But the general point is that it's not consistent across pages. And if the reason given is, "We got it from this source," then even that is not accurate, as shown in the case of Bolivia. Zonker.in.geneva (talk) 08:33, 10 May 2019 (UTC)
 * That's a good question. It probably varies for each individual country. Russia certainly almost always uses "Russian Federation". Maybe Bolivia has some nameplates from 2009 or earlier that it never bothered to get rid of, or uses just "Bolivia" when they want the name to be larger (neither of these look great: ). All the entries that use brackets in the UN are written out here fully (albeit with the original alphabetical order). If you feel they should also use the brackets here, that's a different discussion. CMD (talk) 09:04, 10 May 2019 (UTC)
 * You're not the first person to be confused. I'll change the edit notice and maybe that will help. ―Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:09, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
 * It's not that I'm confused. It's the lack of consistency. I've written a script to scrape data from four different Wikipedia pages (UN Members, World Capitals, TLDs, World Leaders) and the largest part of the script is normalizing the names of countries from the different sources so that I can collate the data into one dictionary. It's ludicrous. Imagine opening up an old copy of Encyclopedia Britannica to find information on Bolivia. But, no, it's not listed under "B" because it's under "Plurinational State of Bolivia." Sure, that may be the official name, but no REAL PERSON calls it that. Not even their citizens or their leader. Maybe in official meetings, but not in every day usage. I recognize the need to be accurate according to official records, but there should be some consistency across pages. Perhaps it would make sense to have a Common Country Name field in these and any other pages that have tables with countries for each row. Zonker.in.geneva (talk) 08:27, 10 May 2019 (UTC)
 * In the vast majority of pages across Wikipedia, countries are listed by whatever their article title is, aside from exceptions where the article title is somehow disambiguated (eg. Republic of Ireland, Georgia (country)). In some pages, such as this one, there may be variations, usually (hopefully) for good reason. I'd be interested to know what variations you have found. Wikipedia pages are designed for reading rather than data scraping (note how Bolivia is under B alphabetically on this page despite the longer name), but if data scraping could be improved without harming readability that might be worth looking into. CMD (talk) 08:40, 10 May 2019 (UTC)
 * East Timor vs. Timor-Leste. Côte d'Ivoire vs. Ivory Coast. Obviously, both are correct, but on a page that's written in English, it should be the English version. "Congo" vs. "Congo, Republic of the" vs. "Republic of the Congo". This last is sorted under "R" not "C" when the table is sorted by Country Name. "Iran" vs. "Iran (Islamic Republic of)". Fully sixty lines of code are to normalize country names I've read. The rest of the code is about 60 lines, too.Zonker.in.geneva (talk) 08:55, 10 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Would you be able to set your code to read the wikilink rather than the displayed name? CMD (talk) 09:04, 10 May 2019 (UTC)
 * I agree to this 100% and stuff like this just drives me to want to correct it. I find typos and inconsistencies all the time, in everything. Butterflydog (talk) 02:32, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Map edits

 * I replaced the first map by the version of the same map that's in United Nations, where it is presented in a way that is faithful to the source. The version that was here before includes the following statement in the footnote: "Territories of states not recognized by the UN are not excluded due to the UN's position that they are part of some UN member state, including, for example, the territories governed by the Republic of China (Taiwan and other smaller islands), as the UN members voted to consider the People's Republic of China as the only lawful representative of China at the UN and the UN chooses not to question its claim that Taiwan is part of China."  This is inconsistent with the UN's own statement on the map that's used as the source, namely: "The designations employed and the presentation of material on this map do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Secretariat of the United Nations concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or any area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries." According to WP:SYNTH, "do not combine different parts of one source to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by the source."  A Wikipedia editor was telling readers to interpret the map in a way that was based on a different statement or action by the UN.  However, the UN explicitly tells readers not to over-interpret the coloring of the map.  The version of the map in United Nations does not have the problematic statement and does include a disclaimer from the source.


 * I removed the third, historical map because it is inaccurate and misrepresents the source. A map is a questionable way to express the history of UN membership because of the complexities of shifting boundaries, territorial disputes, and countries coming into and out of existence.  For example, Germany is shown on the map as it is today, but it is color-coded as joining the UN in 1960-1989, during which time a unified Germany did not exist. Rather, East Germany and West Germany were admitted in 1973, and after reunification became a single member state in 1990.  The source for this map is not a map at all, but rather the UN's year-by-year listing of admission of countries.  That list has many footnotes explaining the complexities in certain cases.  If the UN did not see fit to publish this information in map form -- presumably because of the difficulty of doing so without being misleading -- then neither should we.  It is not proper to attribute an over-simplified and misleading map to a source that did not choose to present information in such an inaccurate way. NightHeron (talk) 00:44, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
 * , WP:BRD and also you are having the same conversation in multiple places, which is not helpful. Your edit explicitly saying in the text of the article that the map is inaccurate is at best POINT-y and at worst actual vandalism (why would we have inaccurate information in our encyclopedia?). I suggest centralizing all conversation, since the points are the same. ―Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:25, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Please read what I wrote before accusing me of vandalism, and try to observe WP:AGF. The words you're objecting to are taken word-for-word from United Nations, see [a] under the map.  If you don't want them in the text, feel free to move them to a footnote, or simply replace them by a direct quote from the United Nations source saying basically that the map is not to be interpreted as an accurate reflection of UN policies.  That's called a "caveat" or a "disclaimer"; it's not vandalism to include that.  As for "multiple places," for a while I was participating in a discussion on the NPOV noticeboard, but when I realized that my concerns were much more issues of accuracy than of NPOV -- and I didn't want to get involved in a debate about Taiwan's status -- I thought that my edits on the maps should be discussed on the talk pages of the two articles containing the maps.  I did not put the above comment at Talk:United Nations because the version of the first map I'm objecting to is only on Member states of the United Nations.  Let's just work together on this, no need for anger.  Thanks. NightHeron (talk) 01:54, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
 * , I didn't accuse you of vandalism and I'm not angry. I agree that we should work together. If the solution here is to delete the map off of Commons, that's fine but removing it one by one and then inserting text that says, "Here's a map but it's not accurate " is not the solution. ―Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:56, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
 * The UN's statement doesn't use the word "inaccurate," but rather says: "The designations employed and the presentation of material on this map do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Secretariat of the United Nations concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or any area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries." Would you object to that disclaimer being in the caption (rather than an editor's caption that conflicts with it)?  Ideally, an improvement would be to include the UN's own map, identified as such and viewable full-screen with a click.  That map has labels and explanatory notes.  But am I right in thinking that we can't do that because of copyright?  Thanks. NightHeron (talk) 02:18, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
 * , The UN does retain copyright as I recall (tho we have several of their resolutions at en.ws...) I'm not even disputing you as such: I just think this entire conversation should be centralized and have more input than just you and me on this one page. ―Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 03:00, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Centralized to what page? I don't think it's an NPOV question, but just a question of accurately conveying what's in the source.  Perhaps there's a place where we can ask what the general policy is or should be about editors creating maps that simplify a source and captions that are somewhat different from what's in the source.  Perhaps that's harmless and even useful for topics (such as uncontroversial scientific ones) where simplification serves a pedagogical purpose.  But, as we see from the long debates currently taking place on the NPOV noticeboard about Palestine, Taiwan, and the maps, when sensitive and controversial matters are involved simplification and editors' modifications of the source can be problematic. NightHeron (talk) 03:45, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
 * , Talk:United Nations will certainly have more watchers and whatever is decided there is applicable here. There may be some relevant WikiProjects you can ping (e.g. International relations). Totally support you doing that and you have some good perspective to add. ―Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 03:49, 11 September 2019 (UTC)


 * , Will do. Thanks for the suggestion. NightHeron (talk) 10:21, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Member states of the USSR
I put back the information about Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania having been member states of the USSR, because that's a historical fact. Many people in those countries might regret that fact, just as some people in Hong Kong might regret the fact that Hong Kong is now part of China, and might wish that history had been different, but wishing doesn't make it so. NightHeron (talk) 11:20, 8 November 2019 (UTC)


 * I looked for the accession year of Ukraïne and found 1945. The text says it is the former Ukraïnian Sovjet Republic. But wasn't the USSR as a whole UN member, rather than the member states individually? The practical importance is that I suppose that sometime in the 1990's the newly independent Ukraïnian state decided to become a UN member, and I would like to know when. Rbakels (talk) 18:39, 6 May 2021 (UTC)


 * I removed it again because it is a historical fact that their annexation into the USSR was null and void according to international law. H2ppyme (talk) 09:12, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

Status of the non-member observer countries
Non-member observer states are recognized as sovereign states, and are free to submit a petition to join as a full member at their discretion. At present, the Holy See and Palestine are the only observer states at the United Nations,[1] although Switzerland also maintained such status until it became a member state. Among others the Sovereign Military Order of Malta also has observer status, although not as a state but as an entity

That being said, the mention of the Kosovo* in the section about observer and non-member states is highly misleading. All other mentioned countries and entities are in a way recognized as a "non-self governing territory" by UN itself or by some of the specialized agencies of the UN, but not Kosovo. Not a single UN agency has recognized Kosovo so it does not deserve to be standing as equal to those countries, territories or entities.

My suggestion is for the paragraph about Kosovo to be removed or corrected by starting it with the sentence that "Kosovo is not an observer due to it not being recognized as sovereign country by the UN or a single UN agency but there's been talks and negotiations yada yada..." Cvarkov1 (talk) 21:50, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
 * , You bring up a good point but this is also similar to the Republic of China which exists and is recognized by some UN member states and also has applied for membership in UN bodies, so in that sense it is similar to at least one other entry in this list. I'm still not sure how the text as it stands is unclear, tho: it seems like it's saying what you feel like it needs to say. I'll make a revision now and you tell me if you think it clarifies enough. ―Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:51, 31 January 2020 (UTC)


 * I do not disagree with mentioning "Palestine" here but I am aware that for Israëli it is very sensitive to consider Palestine a country. But I don't think it is appropriate to emphasixe the opposite either - neutral wordings should be chosen.
 * I would consider Kosovo a country but I am aware this is completely unacceptable for some Serbians.

Rbakels (talk) 18:46, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

Republic of Moldova
Someone else has already asked about this. Not only is Moldova designated in the UN in its full name "Republic of Moldova", but it's also in alphabetical order under R (for "Republic"), not M. Why is this exactly the case? August-54 (talk) 18:29, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

Status of Afghanistan
The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan is collapsing, if it hasn't already. The Taliban have already captured Kabul and are reportedly negotiating a "peaceful transfer of power." I suggest we keep the page as is until the United Nations issues a statement regarding the status of the territory. Frevangelion (talk) 22:39, 15 August 2021 (UTC)

Afghanistan link
Should the link for Afghanistan go to Afghanistan which mostly refers to the current Taliban-led government or should it link to Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (2004–2021), the government that the UN currently recognizes? Icedmorning (talk) 01:21, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

Are the member states the broader kingdom/realms, or just the metropolitan countries?
In the cases of Denmark, Netherlands, New Zealand, do the constituent countries have shared membership, as in the case of the UK, or are only the metropolitan states members, with Greenland, Aruba, Cook Islands etc. being unrepresented in the UN? I see Niue and the Cooks have separate membership in some agencies, but that doesn't clearly answer the question of overall representation, and no mention of Aruba or Greenland. — kwami (talk) 21:11, 11 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure what you mean by shared membership regarding the UK, but each state has a single membership covering the areas in which their sovereignty is recognised. The interests of Greenland would be represented by Denmark, while Aruba is represented by the Netherlands (neither being included on the United Nations list of Non-Self-Governing Territories). The Cook Islands have full treaty making capabilities, but remains officially represented by New Zealand as a member state (in practice, New Zealand only act with the support of the Cook Islands on any treaty regarding them however) as New Zealand has indicated that if the Cook Islands seeks full membership, they will lose their special privileges with regards to New Zealand. States can sign documents on their right as a whole, or on behalf of only one unit (eg. the Netherlands can sign in respect to Aruba or similar areas ), or sign documents that specifically exclude some territories (eg. New Zealand can sign noting the exclusion of CI/Niue). CMD (talk) 02:24, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Thank you. Yes, that's what I was looking for:
 * "New Zealand" = {New Zealand, Niue, Cook Islands}
 * "Denmark" = {Denmark, Faroes, Greenland}
 * "Netherlands" = {Netherlands, Aruba, Curaçao, St Maartin}

Am I missing where that's clarified in the article? I'll try adding something. — kwami (talk) 04:33, 12 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't think it's clarified in the article, and haven't really thought about how that question might be discussed. My understanding is that questions of administrative arrangements and whether exactly a territory is part of a country and so on lie within the bounds of national sovereignty and so are more an issue for domestic laws, having less impact on international laws more concerned with establishing who is sovereign. One of the more interesting cases regarding UN considerations vs domestic considerations would be Mayotte, which has been fully integrated into the standard administrative structures of France, yet is explicitly regarded by the UNGA as part of Comoros. CMD (talk) 06:50, 12 September 2021 (UTC)


 * Actually, it looks like NZ free association may be substantially different than the Dutch and Danish unions.
 * Where this comes in on WP is when we have a list of countries that have enacted certain domestic laws, such as abortion or same-sex marriage, and by default we define the countries by UN membership. So, is abortion legal in Denmark? It is in metropolitan Denmark and Greenland, but not in the Faroes. So do we tick 'yes' or 'no' in the list? Similarly with the Netherlands (metropolitan yes, Aruba, Curacao & St Maarten no) and NZ (metropolitan yes, Niue & Cooks no). The criterion of UN membership to define a country is used to help avoid arguments over what a 'country' is, but the scope of membership is unclear in these cases. Of course, we'd need a parenthetical or footnote regardless, but the definition of the UN member state 'Denmark' would define whether the entry in that cell of the table is 'yes' (with a note 'but not in the associated state of Faroe Islands') or 'varies by constituency', as it would be described for the UK. Similarly, what is the date that same-sex marriage became legal in Denmark, if we're using UN membership as the definition of 'country': 2012, when it was legalized in metropolitan Denmark, or five years later, when it was legalized in the Faroes?
 * I realize I may be trying to pigeonhole something that just doesn't fit, but this is the kind of difficult definition that can cause the same arguments to appear year after year. — kwami (talk) 21:58, 12 September 2021 (UTC)
 * The Kiwi, Dutch, and Danish situations are all unique (personally I find the Denmark situation more similar to the UK than to NZ or NL), as are many others; a consistent rule will be difficult. The UN is concerned only with the exercise of sovereignty, for example Gibraltar is represented by the UK ("Administering power"), despite UK law distinguishing Gibraltar from the UK proper. This makes it an imperfect fit if you want to take into account domestic definitions, especially when domestically the jurisdictional boundaries of same-sex marriage authorities varies between and within countries (also aside from the linguistic point, that if same-sex marriage is legal in Massachusetts, it is legal in the United States, if not in all of it). Maybe the lists could subdivide each UN country into the relevant jurisdictions if applicable? That would allow individual ticks against metropolitan Denmark and England and Wales, and be flexible enough to apply to other complicated situations. CMD (talk) 05:04, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I guess I was hoping for a simpler answer. If you give a date for passage of a law and tag it with the national flag, then for the UK it's obvious that occurs after all 4 member countries have passed the law, not just when England has. But is the Danish flag for the union, equivalent to the UK, or for the metropole, equivalent to England? Or for either, perhaps. Unlike Gibraltar, as you've noted, this isn't a question of non-self-governing territories, most of which we can relegate to a footnote. — kwami (talk) 13:33, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

@CMD, kwami after reading your discussion I had a look into Category:Member states of the United Nations. And I see that New Zealand case is different than the Dutch and Danish ones. We list in this category Kingdom of the Netherlands and Danish Realm, but not Denmark or the Netherlands. Instead we list New Zealand, but not the New Zealand. Does this mean that we acknowledge that New Zealand free association is substantially different than the Dutch and Danish unions? Heanor (talk) 18:32, 31 December 2021 (UTC)


 * According to our article associated state, the UN sees Cooks and Niue much like they do the US freely association states of the former Pacific Trust Territory. Coverage of the two situations on Wikipedia is rather different, but depends on a rather small number of articles and it shouldn't be difficult to bring them (US and NZ) into line if that's felt to be justified. Based on that article, I'm tentatively thinking that we can say that e.g. same-sex marriage is legal in "New Zealand" even though it's not legal in the Cooks or Niue. — kwami (talk) 19:07, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Czechia
The vote board is using Czechia https://www.facebook.com/CzechiaCZ/photos/a.214064121997685/7850829904987697 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.116.189.148 (talk) 23:37, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

Concerns about featured list status
I have concerns that this list might not meet several featured list criteria. Actually, I was surprised to find just now that, not only is this a list (rather than a standalone article), but also a featured list. But there are some places where the page just does not meet the FL criteria:


 * WP:FLC criterion 1 ("Prose. It features professional standards of writing"). Examples include:
 * "On 25 October 1971, the 21st time the United Nations General Assembly debated on the PRC's admission into the UN,[20] United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2758 was adopted, by which it recognized that "the representatives of the Government of the People's Republic of China are the only lawful representatives of China to the United Nations and that the People's Republic of China is one of the five permanent members of the Security Council," and decided "to restore all its rights to the People's Republic of China and to recognize the representatives of its Government as the only legitimate representatives of China to the United Nations, and to expel forthwith the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek from the place which they unlawfully occupy at the United Nations and in all the organizations related to it."" - This is a single sentence and is very hard to read.
 * There are multiple single-sentence paragraphs through the article (e.g. last paragraph of the "Republic of China (1945–1971)" section, third paragraph of the "Bids for readmission as the representative of Taiwan" section, second paragraph of the "Observers and non-members" section).
 * By the way, this list has a disproportionately large amount of prose (25 kilobytes of readable prose), which leads me to think that this should be an article and not a list. This is particularly evident in the section about former members, which alone comprises about two-thirds of the entire article's prose. There are several bulleted lists which may also need to be converted to prose.
 * WP:FLC criterion 3a ("statements are sourced where they appear, and they provide inline citations if they contain any of the four kinds of material absolutely required to have citations"). There are three outstanding citation needed tags on this article, and there are other sentences which are potentially unsourced but are not tagged.
 * WP:FLC criterion 4 ("It is easy to navigate and includes, where helpful, section headings and table sort facilities.") Until just today, there were entire sections which abused semicolon markup to create pseudo-headings, directly contravening MOS:PSEUDOHEAD.

Hopefully, the issues I have mentioned above can be addressed. Otherwise, it is at risk of being sent to WP:FLRC. – Epicgenius (talk) 19:35, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

Do an update to the UN member list.
What I want to do is could you please give the disputed territories such as Palestine, Western Sahara and Vatican City a lighter blue color and give Antarctica an even lighter blue color? Abkhazia, Artsakh, South Ossetia, Transnistria, Palestine, Western Sahara and Vatican city are not UN members, but UN members claim them as parts of them except Vatican city, so could you please change the UN member map by giving UN members dark blue, giving UN observers and disputed territories light blue and give Antarctica an even lighter blue? Could you please describe all these below the map with the three squares that have the colors? FanofMultimedia123 (talk) 12:17, 21 August 2022 (UTC)


 * The current map already colours observers and Antarctica differently. Regarding disputed territories, there are myriad of these, so they are not reflected on the map. CMD (talk) 12:26, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

Czechia again
Apparently, the Czech Republic's UN name had been changed to Czechia already in 2016, but how was that not noticed here until six years later? August-54 (talk) 10:11, 4 November 2022 (UTC)


 * There was a "name place exception" from 2016 to 2022. Basically it was: short name is Czechia but don't use it on name plates and in member list. Now it is over, Czechia is official short name and also used on name plates and in member list. Chrz (talk) 11:21, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Taiwan map
Taiwan should not be colored in blue on the map. The Republic of China is not a UN member and the People's Republic of China does not control Taiwan. Usually China and Taiwan are displayed separately. —Lights and freedom (talk ~ contribs) 17:41, 16 November 2022 (UTC)


 * I agree in principle, but the maps show the UN's published understanding of its member states, etc., even if they don't make a ton of sense (e.g. Gibraltar, who have been given multiple referendums on association with the UK and have expressed a strong desire to maintain the status quo). ―Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:13, 16 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Okay, I did not notice that Gibraltar was grey. I question why this map is being used here at all. Has the UN officially recognized that Taiwan belongs to the PRC? Are these "non-self-governing territories" considered to not be part of the UN member states? But I'm not going to argue to change something here that has no chance of changing. —Lights and freedom (talk ~ contribs) 19:10, 16 November 2022 (UTC)
 * The map is used as a visual overview of the text: I think it has pretty clear high value in that regard. Yes, as I recall, if you look at UN sources, they explicitly call out Taiwan as part of China, but that is my hazy memory. Non-self-governing territories are places where decolonization is considered not complete, so the solution there is for them to have some kind of self-government. See United Nations list of non-self-governing territories. ―Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:33, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

Edit request—Poland and correcting the contradiction of Wikipedia articles
Hello, I’m new to editing Wikipedia and I would like to request an edit on Member states of the United Nations.

The Wikipedia articles Member states of the United Nations and Poland and the United Nations have been unchanged and remain in contradiction of the Wikipedia article Poland Is Not Yet Lost.

Namely, the issue is this: the latter article states that: • no delegation from Poland was present • Poland was not allowed to sign • there was no Polish flag present at the Inauguration • pianist Arthur Rubinstein was greatly dismayed at the fact that Poland was not present nor represented at the Inauguration which he had been invited to play piano at • several decades later, the Polish President recounted this incident, with strong words about how Poland was excluded from the UN (read article here: https://www.president.pl/archive/news-archive-2000-2010/news-2005/participation-of-the-president-of-the-republic-of-poland-in-an-academic-conference-8216the-united-nations-an,37839)

None of these issues have yet been resolved, and thus these articles have been in contradiction for many, many years.

I recently created an account, to help to correct these errors and many others that I regularly find on Wikipedia (typos, grammatical errors, historical inaccuracies, etc.) but I am having technical difficulties with the source code reference editor.

Please, if any of you Wikipedia editors care about the plight of Poland and its people, help fix this broken history! Butterflydog (talk) 02:28, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Proposing major changes to the table
Since this is a major change that also involves removing stuff, posting for discussion here instead of doing a WP:BOLD.

I recently took a look at what this article's table looked like on 1 January 2022. In my opinion, it looks much cleaner than it does now.

I'm proposing the following:
 * Put back the flag icons. They were previously removed using MOS:ICONDECORATION as the reason, but I argue that the flag icons fall under the "serve an encyclopedic purpose" and "serve as visual cues that aid the reader's comprehension" provisions.
 * Remove the Region column. I apologize to the editor or editors who spent the time to add it, but it single-handedly triples the height of the whole table due to the mandatory line breaks in the column entries. The existing article at United Nations geoscheme covers the information in the column.
 * Remove the Original member column. Original members used to have highlighted rows, and there was a complaint that this was non-sortable and the column was added, but this is not true. Original members can be easily sorted without this column through sorting by date and looking at everyone who joined in the year 1945.

In the event that this post gets no responses in ~one week, I will make the above changes. Zowayix001 (talk) 06:49, 18 June 2024 (UTC)


 * Agree with removing region and original member column. Perhaps "Original member" could be added to the Date of admission column in addition to the highlighted colour, which will help make sure that information meets MOS:ACCESS. Not sure the flags provide information additional to the names, but they are used on the actual UN list. CMD (talk) 07:02, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Agreed. Just make sure that you abide by accessibility guidelines like MOS:TABLECAPTION, MOS:COLOR, MOS:DTAB, etc. ―Justin ( koa v f ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 07:21, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Done. Zowayix001 (talk) 22:30, 4 July 2024 (UTC)